


Previously On Other People's Tumblr Prompts

by IuvenesCor



Category: Bastille (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Banter, Crack, Drabbles, Humor, Social Anxiety, Spies & Secret Agents, a copious amount of substance abuse and a fortunate shower curtain, characters and tags added as we go along, once again a good bit of alcohol, one shots, university lads
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-03-01 07:43:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18795988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IuvenesCor/pseuds/IuvenesCor
Summary: A collection of random (and almost definitely ridiculous) Bastille one-shots, inspired by a list of bizarre sentence prompts found on tumblr many moons ago.Current:"Quick catch that cat it stole my wallet!"





	1. Part I - I'll Come Back to (Not Actually) Haunt You

**Author's Note:**

> I'm at it again *headdesk* Curse those wonderful, ridiculous lads for continuing to overrun my creative endeavors.
> 
> So I'm terrible and don't remember from where exactly I stole the list of prompts inspiring this collection, but just to put it out there, I DID NOT CREATE THEM. If you know who did, I'll gladly give credit, but I am not prepared to dust off my old tumblr account and go searching.
> 
> Anyway-- enjoy!
> 
> First prompt: _"Who wouldn't be angry you ate all of my cereal and faked your death for three years!"_

“Oh, hey, Wood. Just so you know, you’re out of milk now.”

Woody wasn’t entirely sure what he expected to find making noise in his kitchen at four in the morning. Of course, a burglar crossed his mind first, hence the cricket bat he fetched from the garage. But somehow he knew it couldn’t be that, the same way he knew it wasn’t the cat being a nuisance, nor the house settling, and most certainly not an old friend who had died three years prior and had a very nice funeral for himself at that.

Except— unless Woody’s eyes were deceiving him in the lowlight of the moon, and initially he was positive they must have been— it actually _was_ the last bit. 

The man stood there, staring sideways at the not-so-spectral image of Dan Smith, who was sitting at the kitchen table and shoveling a spoonful of cold cereal into his half-smiling lips. It wasn’t the Dan that had been memorialized in Woody’s head, meek and young with a ridiculous bird’s nest of a hairdo. This Dan seemed to have somehow aged beyond his three year absence, the look in his eyes harder and wiser than it had ever been, and there was more hair on his coarsely stubbled jaw than there was on his scalp.

After shock faded, elation lasted for maybe three seconds (four, to be generous) before the gravity of the situation hit. Barring the existence of a secret identical twin, this was absolutely Dan; meanwhile, Woody was definitely awake, so this wasn’t a dream, either. And ghosts weren’t even to be considered right now (what spirit in its right mind would spend its time pretending to eat a bowl of cereal? That would make for a rubbish haunting.) Thus, Dan was alive. Somehow, some way, he had faked his death and fooled all his friends for three years.

Three. Bloody. Years.

A twitch of anger made Woody drop the cricket bat, although he could easily admit to wanting to break the damn thing over Dan’s shiny bald head.

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

Dan blinked. “Hi to you too, then.”

The urge to assault his formerly deceased friend grew stronger, but Woody resorted to pointing an accusing finger. “No, no, you— you’re not allowed to sass me. You’re supposed to be dead.”

Putting down his spoon (which wasn’t his spoon to handle, as a matter of fact, as Woody didn’t remember ever stating that inconsiderate arseholes could use his cutlery), the young man considered that statement for a moment. “...Would it make you feel any better if I told you I actually _was_ dead for, like, half a minute?”

“Fuck off,” Woody scowled.

All imitations of innocence drained from Dan’s face. He hung his head, glancing up sheepishly at his old friend. “I’m sorry— really, I am. I was sort of hoping you wouldn’t be _this_ angry, but—“

Woody took a threatening step forward, mindful not to trip over the bat and inadvertently cause his own funeral, throwing his hands in the air. “That a fact? Cos I think I’ve got the right to be pretty bloody pissed off,” he hissed. “Who wouldn’t be angry? I come downstairs in the middle of the night and find you sitting here like nothin’s the matter when you _faked your death for three fucking years_ — and you’re eating all our cereal!”

“There’s... actually more cereal, it’s just the milk that’s gone,” Dan corrected. There was a good pause before he furrowed his brows. “Wait. You’re not properly angry, are you?”

Woody snorted. “I’m pretty sure I can hate your guts and have a sense of humour at the same time.”

“But at least you’re not gonna beat me up with the bat?”

“Nah. That’s the ‘in case of burglars’ bat. I’ll crack your skull some other day.” The smile that slipped out was completely despite himself— or that’s what Woody was going to argue if asked, but it was genuine through and through. Sure, he was royally peeved, and there were still choice words to be had. But not everyone got the chance to say hello again after the world’s most final goodbye. “Welcome back, mate.”

“Thanks.” With a fleeting look at the bowl before him, Dan shrugged. “Mind if I finish this? I’m bloody starving.”

Grabbing the chair opposite the surprise visitor, Woody nodded his (slightly begrudging) approval and sat down. “So, spill. Three years you’re a dead man and now you’re here eating my kids’ breakfast at an ungodly hour. What’s the story?”

“Well...” The spoon sat in Dan’s mouth for a moment as he looked to the ceiling, considering his words, which set off the bullshit alarm in Woody’s brain. He eventually removed the utensil and leaned in toward the table. “Not to be cliche or anything, but it’s kind of one of those ‘I’d tell you, but then I’d have to kill you’ things.” At the sight of his friend’s arching eyebrows, he continued, “I promise I’m not dodging the subject. Most of the story will be out in the news eventually— soon. But I’m pretty sure _I’d_ end up dead if I told you, too. Like, proper dead. Perma-dead. Look, if I said ‘Interpol’, would that be a good enough explanation?”

Woody crossed his arms. “Nope.”

Dan sighed, deflating, and went back to finishing off his stolen food. “Well, it’s gonna have to be, at least for a bit. I’m not even supposed to be here, but they let me come back to England for a few days for... stuff. Slipped out on my handlers for the night so I could see something familiar.”

“And you pick, of all places, my kitchen?” That made literally no sense. They were friends, sure, but if Woody had been whisked away from everything he knew by the world police, he’d probably drop in on family first, and he knew Dan would do the same. Thus... “There’s an ulterior motive here.”

Even through the dimness of the room, Woody could see Dan’s cheeks flush. _Gotcha._  
  
“Okay, so maybe I need to ask about a few things, a few people.”

The older man laughed. “International cops help you get dead for a few years and turn you into some sort of super spy, presumably... and you need _me_ for information?”

“It’s... complicated.” Dan’s expression was stern and serious, but his attempt at pleading with his eyes made him look like a little kid. “Woody, I’m really sorry I dropped in on you like this after so long. But will you help me out?”

The part of Woody that was the disgruntled friend, needlessly heartbroken over a faked death, still wanted to cause Dan some manner of physical harm, even if it was simply tossing him out the front door. But Dan Smith was a good sort, and Woody knew whatever he’d been up to wasn’t done with intentional malice or thoughtlessness. And now he was here, some sort of civilian secret agent, and he was asking for help— which, coincidentally, would by proxy of his help make Woody a civilian secret agent, and _that_ was bloody cool.

Leaning back in his chair, the man nodded thoughtfully. “Two conditions. One, this isn’t going to put Chrissy or the boys in any danger.”

“No, no, of course not! I wouldn’t come here if I thought it would get you hurt. I promise.” Woody had never heard his friend be more earnest. “So... what’s the other condition?”

“You pay me back for that milk and cereal.”

A laugh leapt out from Dan’s lips.

“Deal.”


	2. Part II - Get Carried Away

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not sure why I decided to take this prompt upon myself, but oh well, there you go. There wasn't much else to do with "I'm going to need you to put on some underwear before you say anything else" without getting deeper than I ever want to go. xD *sweats*
> 
> How's everyone liking _Doom Days_ so far, by the way? I'm not 100% sold but I am genuinely enjoying most of it so far.

Children, that’s what they were. Legally, physically they may have been adults. But some days, having to keep tabs on the four men collectively called Bastille was harder than trying to wrangle a group of small children. (Not that Dick had all that much experience in the latter— he was a tour manager, not a nanny, for God’s sake!)

(Though he could always take cues from the child care industry and invest in some of those backpack-type harnesses. Surely those existed in adult size.)

When the four finally showed up at the car park where their tour bus was stationed, shambling out of a German taxi, they didn’t even have the decency to seem ashamed. They merely stumbled along, thoroughly hungover by the look of it, squinting at the morning sun and groaning a little amongst themselves. Zombies did exist, and alcohol was what made them.

“Where the fuck have you been?” Dick challenged, one hand tensed around his mobile. He’d been keeping in touch with the rest of the crew, hoping to find the whereabouts of his wayward musicians who so kindly neglected to return any of his calls or texts. “It’s nearly ten-thirty and we’ve got a noon flight out of here. And— good God, what the hell did you do to yourselves?”

There was more squinting and finally some embarrassment on the faces of the four. Now that they were here, confirmed not to be dead in a foreign alleyway or anything of the like, Dick could properly examine the state of them. He’d rather have not acknowledged it to save time, but their present appearance was a little hard to ignore.

Woody had the most courage to actually look Dick in the eye from behind a few dangling strands of hair; the rest of his locks were pulled back in a loose, lopsided braid. Apart from a disgruntled expression, a plaster on his temple and a few sundry stains on his shirt, he seemed fairly untouched.

Will also appeared well put together, only with a bit of tousle to his hair and fatigue in his heavy-lidded eyes; but he must have gotten into the vodka again. Dick could just make out the shape of a tattoo on the bassist’s right forearm— what from the side looked like half a sloppy representation of the earth with the word _World_ scrolling off the image in a truly interesting choice of font. Considering the saga of the _Bad Blood_ tattoo, Dick determined that history had repeated itself, and Will seemed no happier after the fact than the first time.

The first thing to notice about Kyle was the shock of silver hair chalk in a stripe on his head, well coordinated with the silver polish on his fingernails. The second thing of note was about three different shades of lipstick in faint blotches on various parts of his face. He was limping along with only one shoe and a mismatched pair of socks.

And finally: Dan, who was somewhat hiding himself behind the other men, though he was easy enough to spot with his tall hair mussed up to the sky. As the group made their way forward, shifting with each step, Dick was able to piece together that the only articles of clothing on Dan’s person were not even clothing, but unlaced trainers and a shower curtain wrapped tightly around his torso.

“I don’t wanna talk about it,” Woody muttered first, ready to smack the next person who glanced at him wrong by the looks of it.

More forthcoming to Dick’s question was Kyle, watching the ground as if his other shoe might magically come walking along to reunite with him. “Listen, we— we promise it was only supposed to be a totally normal house party...” Right as the tour manager was about to ask who exactly in Germany they knew that was throwing house parties, the keyboardist continued. “It wasn’t half bad, really.”

“Unexpected illicit substances aside,” Will added, barely loud enough to hear.

“Yeah, that wasn’t exactly on the level.” Kyle’s red eyes widened as he looked up and saw the disbelief on Dick’s face. “The drinks. They definitely slipped somethin’ in our drinks, we weren’t just goofing off.”

“Then should I be concerned about this?” Dick didn’t exactly want to go around calling the police on some unknown strangers in a foreign country, but he needed to have the band’s best interest in mind. Just because they were on a bender didn’t make it their fault if some idiots tried to molest them.

The four men eyed each other as if expecting something might come up; thankfully, no terrible tales or suspicions came forward, at least not along the lines Dick feared.

“Well, you can see what came of it,” Will glumly replied after a moment, flashing a better view of his truly awful tattoo. (They’d spelt it “Wilde World,” somehow.)

“Some arsehole took my cash,” groused Woody.

“I actually had a pretty okay time,” said Kyle, a watery smile causing the lipstick smudges to warp into different shapes.

Dan finally broke his silence to give a report, though Dick didn’t need any verbal confirmation to know what he had almost definitely been up to. “I’m ninety-nine percent certain nothing I didn’t ask for happened. I think.”

That was good enough for Dick— the rest would have to be addressed later. “Before you say anything else, I’m going to need you to put on some pants,” he directed, pointing a finger at the blushing frontman. “And the rest of you, too, get the hell in that bus and get ready for the airport. I am not letting a show get rescheduled because you decided to get wasted.”

“Not completely our fault, though,” Kyle weakly maintained.

With a scoff and an eye-roll, Dick pointed back at the tour bus like a parent about to demand _go to your room._ “I don’t care whose fault is what— in!”

The men obeyed, sluggish though they were, making a variety of comments anywhere from “sorry, mate” to “d’you have to be so loud about it?” until each one disappeared into the confines of the bus.

For extra measure, Dick scoffed again. If their time table wasn’t so strict, taking some incriminating photos for the purpose of “this is why you always touch base with your tour manager before going off and being idiots” might have been wise. But then on the other hand, they were children— not only hard to keep tabs on, but very bad at listening. They would do what they pleased, even if that meant substituting one’s clothes for a shower curtain or getting a regrettably permanent mark on one’s body. They wanted to have a good time.

Dick didn’t begrudge them that. He just wished their good times wouldn’t come at the expense of his sanity.


	3. Part III - We Keep on Running

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we have _“Quick catch that cat it stole my wallet!”_ This one was going to take a very different turn originally (there may have been shapeshifters lol), but a dear fellow Stormer gave me the suggestion of a different direction which I liked much better. xD (Thanks love <3)

To be perfectly honest, Dan wasn’t sure why he let himself get into this situation. Granted, knowing why probably didn’t matter; the chances that he would remember this evening with any sort of clarity were slim. 

Uni was synonymous with two things: learning and parties, particularly the kind of parties where you could get spectacularly wasted. Unlike most students he knew, he actually liked the learning equal to the drinking; but he’d rather drink with one or two friends instead of a boisterous house packed full of people. Ralph was here, though, lured in by some friends of his and the thematic appeal of a Halloween party, and thus— with nothing else planned for the night— so was Dan.

Despite a less than healthy amount of beer in his system (or maybe because of it), Dan could feel the general queasiness in his stomach that came from socializing with strangers. When that queasiness started morphing into the urge to heave, he decided to break away from the crowd. As much as leaving a pile of sick on the carpet was a surefire way to not get invited to an overcrowded party again, he was _just_ sober enough to not want to embarrass himself that way. (Wearing a tiger-print union suit was bad enough.)

The front door was closer than the toilet (at least, he thought so... he actually had no bloody clue where the toilet was, despite having hid in there for a bit at the start of the evening), so he carefully waded his way through the ocean of masquerading students and plastic cups to step outside for a patch of grass and some fresh air. 

Once he gave his sloshy stomach a chance to settle, the change in scenery did him wonders, at least as his nerves went. There was much less to focus on now. The suffocated sounds of music and revelry from inside the house were close enough to be enjoyed yet far enough away to take in stride. His eyes wandered around the yard, lingering in morbid curiosity at the sight of a zombie and a police officer (or poor facsimiles thereof) snogging by a trellis, before losing interest and turning his gaze to the stars. 

How long he stood there, staring at the sky and trying not to fall over his own feet, would be a mystery to everyone (including Dan.) But it only took a shout and a hasty shove from an unexpected force on his right to break him out of the heavenly hypnotism. 

The fall that came immediately afterward, being generally as unpleasant as falling to the ground tends to be, jostled his stomach again. Frustrated— he really would prefer not to vomit tonight! — he shook his head and squinted down the driveway, trying to refocus his vision. It was hard to tell what had knocked into him, but he could make out a dark figure fleeing under the streetlights at the end of the property.

The sound of clumsy footsteps coming onto the front porch thundered behind him, followed by an anxious yell, an encore to the shout he had heard just moments before.

“Quick— catch that cat! It stole my wallet!”

 _What...?_ Dan reckoned that wasn’t a sentence he heard every day. Furrowing his brows, he wobbled onto his feet again and turned toward the house, just in time to see a gangly kid with a smart mustache dressed like someone straight out of _The Life Aquatic_ stagger down the porch steps. 

“Wait,” the kid slurred, “where’d it go?” Eyes wide, he looked towards the mismatched couple by the trellis (seems he couldn’t help but stare, too) before turning to Dan. “Oi, babe. You’re a kitty cat too, ain’t you? D’you see another cat come by here? It took my wallet.”

Dan blinked slowly, waiting for the words to process and make even the slightest bit of sense. “I... I mean, there was somebody in a black costume...”

The kid perked up, staring at Dan more intently than before as he got closer. The smell of beer on his breath was unbelievable. “Did they have lil’ stick up ears an’ a tail? And cute lil’ painted whiskers?” 

“...Maybe? Look, I don’t—“

“Ooh, that’s them, all right! Stupid cat,” he muttered, “get my trust by bein’ a cat an’ then stealin’ my stuff.” Then, rather unannounced, he grabbed Dan’s wrist and started tugging him down the lawn. “C’mon! Let’s go!”

“Wait— huh? Go?” The furrow in Dan’s brows grew even deeper as his voice rose higher. “Go where?”

“We gotta chase ‘em! You gotta tell me where that cat went!”

Slightly horrified at the thought of running in his current physical state, Dan wagged his head desperately. “They went left!” he replied, pointing down the street even as he was being dragged ever closer to it. “Leave me outta this, man!” Instead of arguing his lack of sobriety (though it wouldn’t take much convincing), he said, “You don’t know me, I’m shit for running.”

The kid took a glance behind him. “Wha’s your name?”

“Uh... Dan.”

“Hi Dan, I’m Kyle. Now I know you, an’ you can run just fine. Let’s go!”

For being lean as a reed, Kyle’s pull was surprisingly strong. Dan considered fighting back, but it would require just as much effort as running— maybe more— and boozing up always had a way of making him the ‘go with the flow’ type. Besides, “I chased a wallet-snatching cat down the street with a young Steve Zissou” was a better story than “social anxiety’s a bitch so I stood outside and did nothing,” right?

(His only hope was that this story would be one he wanted to remember.)


End file.
